Q:1. How did you decide on what poems to send?

When Alan told me about the theme I went back into my poems, thought I might have something that fit. I ended up picking ‘The Doghouse’ for submission as it’s kinda a meditation on the landscape, a rundown shack you see out your window when you’re zooming past on the road. I remember seeing that building or what was left of it just outside of Denver, no other buildings around for a few miles. At the time, I just wrote a few notes, the colour of the soil, the dog nearby, the sound of the insects at night. It worked out in the end as a kind of reclamation poem, the landscape un-taming itself. The only human involvement left being the wasting remains and the dog that’s trained to sit by the hearth
I thought it seemed to fit the call.

Q:2. What poetic form did it take, and why?

This poem is free verse as most of my work is. I find it less constraining being unbound by traditional form, rhyme scheme or meter.

Q:3. How did you use the whiteness of the page in your poem?

I don’t think too much of the empty space in a poem or experimenting much with the page format, but I have been fighting the fear of the long line. My early work looked like a bean pole! I think ‘Doghouse’ is a happy medium. I am cautious about leaving too much of the page blank. A page needs more pulp sometimes.

Q:4. How did you decide on the title of your poem?

I have a standard rule when I’m naming poems: If you can’t make it clever make it simple. I don’t think there could have been a better name for this piece than a “say-what-you-see” title.

Q:5. Imagery, or narrative. Which was more important to you in writing the poem?

Absolutely imagery. Colorado is gorgeous and so alien to an outsider. The soil by itself is a whole pallette of dark blue-greens and straw yellows and iron reds. That landscape in a freeze frame, like a blurred photograph of the roadside when you’re going 60 MPH. That’s what I was aiming to capture. There’s no story here except a dog sleeping in the ruins of a shack.

Q:6. What do you think of where your poem is placed in the collection?

I don’t particularly think about where my poetry comes in a journal. Manuscripts are a different story but what matters for me mostly is the company the poem keeps and in TWT ‘Doghouse’ is in very good company.

Q:7. Once they have read your poem, what do you hope the reader will leave with?

Apparently the average person considers a single painting in a museum or a gallery for 15-30 seconds.
Every image in this painting, every colour in the soil, every insect screech, every plank and slate got mushed together into a few lines. I was careful. I tried to get it all right or as close to what I saw as possible. It was beautiful.
If a reader considers it, imagines something close to what I saw for 15-30 6 least, I’ll be happy with that.

Bio and Links

Jay Rafferty

is a redhead, an uncle, and an eejit. He is a guest lecturer on Irish Literature and a Programme Committee member for The John Hewitt Society. He is also the author of two published chapbooks, Holy Things (The Broken Spine, 2022) & Strange Magic (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). You can read his poetry, essays, and reviews in several journals, including FU Review Berlin, An Áitiúil Anthology, Unstamatic and HOWL New Irish Writing.